Letters to the Editor, October 4 2024

Director, B’nai B’rith UK Bureau of International Affairs ​
 

Isn’t it time for us to congratulate Israel’s brilliant Air Force as well as its equally brilliant secret service? As the Israelis no doubt are, I trust we Jews in Britain are also equally as proud.

David Lee

Kingston upon Thames

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​Bitter irony

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When Israel is fighting for its life, Sir Keir Starmer and David Lammy have withdrawn the UK’s objections to an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, have instigated a partial arms embargo on Israel and have restarted funding Unrwa, some of whose employees have been shown to be members of Hamas.

In the light of the above, to read that Sir Keir was invited as the guest of honour to a fundraising dinner organised by the Holocaust Educational Trust, where he was given a standing ovation at the end of his speech, is beyond belief.

The prime minister must have been left with the impression that no matter how much he undermines Israel, thereby encouraging anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment, he will still have the support of the Jewish community – and even some of its institutions that claim to protect it and the Jewish community from antisemitism. What a bitter irony.

Dr Michael Shoolman

London N3

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​Important task

​The survival of 19 Princelet Street and the synagogue erected in its former garden is remarkable evidence of the thriving Jewish community in the East End of London from the mid-19th century notwithstanding dire living and working conditions (Can you help uncover the history of one of the East End’s long forgotten synagogues? September 27).

My great grandfather Abraham Heiser was the secretary of the Loyal United Friendly Society that established the synagogue in the house in 1870 and secretary of the synagogue when built in 1890. The large meeting table at which he and colleagues sat is preserved in the synagogue.

The preservation and restoration of the house and synagogue is an important task for Anglo Jewry in general and descendants of the families who established it in particular.

The Spitalfields Trust is to be commended for this initiative and should be supported by the community.

David Lewis

London W1

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​Supreme courage

​The splendid article (September 27) on Surgeon Captain Alex William Lippman Kessel is most timely, given last week’s 80th anniversary. I met him once at a veterans’ reunion but he was loath to talk about his war. He said I should read his book and I did.

Born in Pretoria, South Africa, in 1914, he was in the 16th Parachute Field Ambulance at Arnhem – having already served in North Africa and Italy. During the Arnhem battle at the St Elizabeth hospital, having been POW, he saved the life of the badly wounded Brigadier General Sir John “Shan” Hackett , CO of the 4th Para Brigade, where he was disguised, with Lippy’s connivance, as a “Cpl Hayter” so the Germans would not take Hackett as a prominent POW.

Lippy also helped smuggle arms out of the hospital for burial, so the Dutch resistance could dig them up later to fight on. Given permission later to escape, he again met Hackett at a safe house and again operated on him, giving him as Hackett said, “57 years more life”.

Ivor Rimmon, another Jewish airborne veteran, testified to me how, when Lippy died in 1986, General Hackett personally organised his Jewish funeral at Arnhem, near the Oosterbeek Para cemetery so he “could be with his friends of the Parachute Regiment who were killed there”. (see my book Fighting Back’s chapter on Jews at Arnhem, page 451-2). The headstone has both the Star of David and the Pegasus paratroop badge inscribed. In 1945 he led a medical team into Belsen death camp. Lippy’s MC and MBE were awarded for supreme courage at Arnhem and he was later promoted to major.

Martin Sugarman

AJEX Archivist